Good house rules for noobs/infrequent games

[Willie Dewitt]

Greetings, programs!

Several months ago I made a few posts here when I busted out some Classic Traveller (for the first time since around 1983) to run a bit of when my D&D group dropped to a minimum amount of players. Had a full group of AD&D since then, but am looking to try some CT again when critical players are missing. Next week on Thanksgiving Eve might afford that opportunity to give it another go. My players did seem to dig it and I hope would like more. It focused on the wonder of far flung planets and open space, and more or less did ad hoc "rulings not rules" type of things for combat and other tasks. Just wanted to avoid the lookups (I really don't memorize rules anymore) and keep the action moving because we seemed to have a lot of fun with the quiet moments. Heavy role-play seemed to be promoted by CT, at least for my group. Really, my approach is to look at the CT rules of books 1-3 like I would the original LLB's of OD&D if I had little experience with it. Heavily "winging it" to get things done like when we were kids with the game. We also only play about three hours, so time saving is a plus.

Having not even looked at the rules for months, I do remember some of my issues and "means to ends" with the rules, and thought so that I could maybe tidy it up a bit for our next session I would ask some opinions on house rules you use or have seen to take some of the crunch out of the game and get things done easily and fairly. Then I can keep it all in mind as I look at the rules again over the next few days. So let me throw it out there on a couple or three subjects and hopefully you can chime in with some tips for a guy who wants to keep things as simple as possible.

Combat: Simple enough really, but I didn't really like the movement and range stuff. I know this might not be a popular notion here ( :CoW: ), but I basically just went to hex-movement on the grease board with minis. Everybody has a 12 movement, with HTH weapons you could move half and make and attack. With guns or other missiles you could shift a hex and fire with no minus, or move up to half movement with a 1 penalty to hit per hex movies. As far as short, medium, and long ranges I just sort of used common sense and gave penalties for long range shots depending on the weapon.

Armor: I have to confess, I didn't really like the rules. Too much like those in OD&D. But without a real solution I actually sort of ignored it. No player had any real armor, but I think as of the last game they used some earnings to more heavily arm themselves, including flak jackets and the like. I really want to use a point absorbing system. So I would especially welcome some comments on how folk might have gone about this. And has anybody used an "activiation role" rule with point blocking armor? I loved that rule in the old Champions systems, accounting for armor that only covers part of the body. This of course complicates things, so I might not do that. But would love a simple system that doesn't involve pluses or minuses for hitting armor types, just point absorbing.

Ship to ship combat: Oy. A lot going on there. I don't want it to be a huge part of my games, but it must happen now and again. But I don't want it to go all night either. My next session might require some of that. So I was thinking of really going outside the box with that. Rely heavily on the skills of the crews and them dicing off; the superiority of one ship over another (in terms of...well, everything; weapons, armor, damage avoidance). Simple resolutions for how badly a ship is hit and if any major systems are damaged. I have to admit this is a section I really need to study again, but for now if anybody has advice for really boiling the ship to ship stuff down to very simple methods I'd be over the moon. I want it to be fun and for the characters actions to matter, but I just want it to not take much longer or be more involved than man to man stuff.

That's all for now, but I may have some more questions/comments after I look at the rules a bit more this weekend.

Cheers,

Willie

p.s. I've been looking at the old The Fantasy Trip stuff lately too, and see a lot of stuff there that I think would work well with CT. Anybody familiar with TFT who can chime in on this concept is worth extra points!

 

[Willie Dewitt]

I should maybe clarify; my game is not really heavy on the combat. Turns out most of the characters weren't heavy combat military types, so I kept the games more exploratory/doing little low combat missions/favors for folks. Helping a rich guy watch out for more dangerous wildlife while he was out doing some light camping/hunting. Or mixing it up with some non-military thug types. The party is really more about making money with using the one characters merchant ship than seeing out blazes of glory. Hence why I don't really feel the need for a lot of rules crunch with man to man or ship to ship combat.

 

[kilemall]

On ships AND armor you would probably appreciate the MgT1E approach- the ship combats are band oriented and quite a bit closer to each other so closer to cinematic time scales, and the MgT armor is ALL about the absorption.

For ships, you could simply have four ranges- short, long extreme, and out of range. Use the CT to hits with the computer program/skill mods and apply 2- DM at long, -5 at extreme.

Since you like hexes, perhaps a fast and dirty Mayday sort of thing, each hex is 10,000 km, short range is 0-5 hexes, long is 6-10 hexes, extreme is 11-14 hexes, 15+ is out of range. Acceleration is xG rating of ship speed per turn, and you apply it like the miniatures rules in CT. This is a much smaller space then regular CT, but should allow a lot more escapes and a premium on high-G ships to maintain/break contact.

For a point absorption deal, try these values on for size.

Jack -4 points absorption, melee weapons only.

Mesh -2D melee, -4 guns

Flak jacket -1D-4 all

Cloth -2D all

Combat Armor -3D all

Battle Dress -4D all

Reflec -4D laser only

Ablat -3D laser -1D everything else, reduce absorption by 1 per hit.

You could treat that as take die off the damage roll, or 'counter roll' how successful/saving the armor was that particular hit.

As for your combat issues, Snapshot has that AP rule for handling activities, and AHL has a pseudo-snapshot/psuedo-Striker system for greater fidelity. Both also have starship-sized movement/engagement systems (but both may be beyond your intended complexity level).

 

[Willie Dewitt]

Yes, that ship and personal armor stuff is more along the lines of what I would look for. Though had not thought of rolling dice for amount of absorbing power for a particular hit. Little more work, but also can up the drama factor and some other things. Let the player make the armor dice roll and it's another fun thing you can blame or praise the players luck for.

As far as other supplements, I'd rather go it with the 1-3 books and a single page cheat sheet of house info. I bought the pdfs of books 1-3 that comes with the separate charts pages which is handy (I sold my original Trav books when Ebay first came around).

 

[flykiller]

Ship to ship combat

well if you need boat deckplans, I have a few in my sig links below.

 

[whartung]

You should just hand wave ship combat. Just describe what happens, and what happens is what you (the ref) wants to happen.

If you want the pirates to board the ship, then, yup, they're boarding the ship "How about that, they took out your missile launcher -- here comes the gig."

Seriously, ship combat is not very cinematic, tends to be really lethal, and even when it's not, it's extraordinarily expensive (as in MCrs worth of damage on a die roll).

So, just wing it.

 

[mike wightman]

House rules to speed stuff up:

resolve tasks on 2d6 with a target number of 8+ for most tasks or 12+ for the hard stuff. If you want to encourage role playing allow a player who describes his character's actions well and role plays the situation a boon die - roll all 3d6 and keep the highest 2.
If your players insist on trying silly things against the odds grant them a bane die - roll 3d6 and keep the lowest 2. This boon/bane is stolen directly from MgT 2e but it works really well in play.

Combat - wing it. 8+ for well aimed shots (boon if character takes time etc) 12+ for snap shots.

Damage - roll damage and use armour as damage reduction - I subtract damage dice based on armour type, but another way to do it is subtract armour from rolled damage.
Armour values can be adapted from AHL, Striker, T4 or make up your own.

Ship combat - look at the Ship's Boat skill for a nifty quick play ship combat system.
Add rolls for the gunner to hit enemies, the engineer to provide extra power for double fire or roll for damage control, navigation for sensor tasks to detect the enemy, computer to aid in ECM.

 

[atpollard]

Armor: I have to confess, I didn't really like the rules. Too much like those in OD&D. But without a real solution I actually sort of ignored it. No player had any real armor, but I think as of the last game they used some earnings to more heavily arm themselves, including flak jackets and the like. I really want to use a point absorbing system. So I would especially welcome some comments on how folk might have gone about this. And has anybody used an "activation role" rule with point blocking armor? I loved that rule in the old Champions systems, accounting for armor that only covers part of the body. This of course complicates things, so I might not do that. But would love a simple system that doesn't involve pluses or minuses for hitting armor types, just point absorbing.

The simplest is to just bump the required Hit from 8+ to 10+ if protected by the armor and just classify armor by what it protects against:

Jack & Mesh = Melee Weapons (incl. claws & teeth)
Flak jacket & Cloth = 3D6 weapons (most guns)
Combat Armor & Battle Dress = Heavy Weapons (4D6+, PGMP, FGMP)
Reflec & Ablat = Lasers only

Not a lot of fine granularity and it is still a To Hit modifier, but it is at least real simple.

If you want to absorb Damage, then you have the Striker Penetration system and the Mongoose Traveller subtract dice of Damage systems to choose from.

Personally, we have been using a stripped down version of Striker, but the tradeoff is damage is "light wound", "serious wound" and "dead" rather than specific HPs. So a lot depends on what you are after.

 

[Willie Dewitt]

You should just hand wave ship combat. Just describe what happens, and what happens is what you (the ref) wants to happen.

If you want the pirates to board the ship, then, yup, they're boarding the ship "How about that, they took out your missile launcher -- here comes the gig."

Seriously, ship combat is not very cinematic, tends to be really lethal, and even when it's not, it's extraordinarily expensive (as in MCrs worth of damage on a die roll).

So, just wing it.

Heh, naw, I do love the dice factor and somewhat defined chances of success or failure for my NPC's as well as for the players. Even if its just a dice off with D6's. But I do want it to resemble CT, just in case a player comes along who knowa the game. Otherwise I might have just used something like Fantasy Trip in the setting.

I love the boon/bane dice idea! Think I might also do 6+, 8+, 10+, and 12+ for easy, average, hard, and very hard rolling.

 

[mike wightman]

I've found the 6+ and 10 + target numbers are never needed in actual play - the 2 point difference isn't enough of a probability gap on a 2d system. If you are tempted to raise the difficulty to 10+ just impose a bane die instead. Similarly if you want to make something easier - and at 6+ with a +skill/attribute DM it is almost pointless rolling the dice - go with a boon die.

 

[Willie Dewitt]

I've found the 6+ and 10 + target numbers are never needed in actual play - the 2 point difference isn't enough of a probability gap on a 2d system. If you are tempted to raise the difficulty to 10+ just impose a bane die instead. Similarly if you want to make something easier - and at 6+ with a +skill/attribute DM it is almost pointless rolling the dice - go with a boon die.

Good point. And the less numbers I have to deal with probably the better

 

[Willie Dewitt]

well if you need boat deckplans, I have a few in my sig links below.

Thanks, checking those out.

 

[atpollard]

I've found the 6+ and 10 + target numbers are never needed in actual play - the 2 point difference isn't enough of a probability gap on a 2d system. If you are tempted to raise the difficulty to 10+ just impose a bane die instead. Similarly if you want to make something easier - and at 6+ with a +skill/attribute DM it is almost pointless rolling the dice - go with a boon die.

Did you mean when using bane/boon dice?
Because the statistical difference between 6+, 8+ and 10+ on 2d6 is pretty significant ... 6+ (72%), 8+ (42%), 10+ (17%).

 

[aramis]

Because people are throwing it about....
Odds of rolling X and X+ on standard, boon, and bane dice; 2d6 multiplied by 6 so all odds are in 216 chances.

Roll R		N R=	N R+	R=	R+		N R=	N R+	% R=	% R+		N R=	N R+	% R=	% R+
12		6	216	2.8%	100%		16	216	7.4%	100%		1	216	0.5%	100%
11		12	210	5.6%	97.2%		27	200	12.5%	92.6%		3	215	1.4%	99.5%
10		18	198	8.3%	91.7%		34	173	15.7%	80.1%		7	212	3.2%	98.1%
9		24	180	11.1%	83.3%		36	139	16.7%	64.4%		12	205	5.6%	94.9%
8		30	156	13.9%	72.2%		34	103	15.7%	47.7%		19	193	8.8%	89.4%
7		36	126	16.7%	58.3%		27	69	12.5%	31.9%		27	174	12.5%	80.6%
6		30	90	13.9%	41.7%		19	42	8.8%	19.4%		34	147	15.7%	68.1%
5		24	60	11.1%	27.8%		12	23	5.6%	10.6%		36	113	16.7%	52.3%
4		18	36	8.3%	16.7%		7	11	3.2%	5.1%		34	77	15.7%	35.6%
3		12	18	5.6%	8.3%		3	4	1.4%	1.9%		27	43	12.5%	19.9%
2		6	6	2.8%	2.8%		1	1	0.5%	0.5%		16	16	7.4%	7.4%

[tc=4]Standard[/tc] [tc=4]Boon[/tc] [tc=4]Bane[/tc]

 

[Willie Dewitt]

Jack -4 points absorption, melee weapons only.

Mesh -2D melee, -4 guns

Flak jacket -1D-4 all

Cloth -2D all

Combat Armor -3D all

Battle Dress -4D all

Reflec -4D laser only

Ablat -3D laser -1D everything else, reduce absorption by 1 per hit.


kilemall, I think I'm going to go ahead and use these bits. For Flack Jacket, is that 1D6 for protection -4 (so max 2 points of protection) from that rolled amount, or roll a D6 and add 4 to it for the protection? Maybe neither; both don't seem quite right.

 

[ian54]

p.s. I've been looking at the old The Fantasy Trip stuff lately too, and see a lot of stuff there that I think would work well with CT. Anybody familiar with TFT who can chime in on this concept is worth extra points!

Wow! Another person who knows Traveller and TFT! They should work well together being skill based systems, you could just use TFT with made up skills equivalent of the Traveller ones. Keep it simple, any further and you may as well just use GURPS Traveller.

 

[aramis]

Wow! Another person who knows Traveller and TFT! They should work well together being skill based systems, you could just use TFT with made up skills equivalent of the Traveller ones. Keep it simple, any further and you may as well just use GURPS Traveller.

TFT isn't really skill based.

Also, someone did a TFT-Traveller crossover... checking my saved copy, Ty Beard.

 

[Whipsnade]

Many of the good house rules I've seen posted here involve reducing book keeping, especially the book keeping involved with minor possessions and supplies.

Instead of the players spending (wasting) time putting together and paying for shopping lists for themselves and the Ship's Locker, you instead just have them "deposit" a chunk of money instead. Then, whenever they need something like vacc suits patches, small repair parts, and other "no-brainer" items, you simply deduct the cost from the money "deposited" in their personal account or the Ship's Locker.

If there's a question about whether the engineer PC would have bought two spare XTY143-BHG frommitz boards, you simply roll against the PC's relevant skill, INT, or EDU. That way the player isn't penalized for not having the fictional knowledge, skills, or professionalism the PC is assumed to possess.

Another good house rule involves robot costs. Rather than designing the robot, figuring purchase price, maintenance cost, and the like, you "price" the robot according to the skills it possesses. For example, if your want a navigation robot with Navigator-2 - actually just a cube squatting on the bridge someplace - your players would have to shell out 6000Cr per month, the same they'd pay a PC/NPC with the same skill. That cost would represent the mortgage payment plus the maintenance needs, parts, calibration services, and other supplies the robot required to operate correctly.

Autodocs, machinery to replace medics and doctors, work the same way. An autodoc capable of surgery would cost the players 2600Cr per month in payments, maintenance, and supplies.

 

[aramis]

Some of my favorites involve the abstraction of certain items...

Like the ship's locker: just set a price limit on items, and make it a slush fund that becomes "real stuff" when drawn.

And the Computer rule I tweak from S&S...
Make your roll, ask 1d6+skill questions of the GM, which must be answerable with a yes, no, or XeY numerical answer.
Works well with sensors, too.

My biggest advice:
Pick a combat system you like, and a task system you like, and have them bent into a playable shape before the one shot. For the most part, any post-CT task system can work with any post-CT edition's combat mechanics.
And CT combat can work with MT, 2300, MgT, or TNE fairly easily.

 

[kilemall]

Jack -4 points absorption, melee weapons only.

Mesh -2D melee, -4 guns

Flak jacket -1D-4 all

Cloth -2D all

Combat Armor -3D all

Battle Dress -4D all

Reflec -4D laser only

Ablat -3D laser -1D everything else, reduce absorption by 1 per hit.

kilemall, I think I'm going to go ahead and use these bits. For Flack Jacket, is that 1D6 for protection -4 (so max 2 points of protection) from that rolled amount, or roll a D6 and add 4 to it for the protection? Maybe neither; both don't seem quite right.

Well remember I'm giving you the option to either take it off the top or counterroll.

SO say the flak jacket is protecting against a typical 3D weapon.

For taking it off the top, the 3D weapon would therefore roll as a 2D-4.

For counterrolling it would be 1D and add 4 for the subtraction against the roll for a range of -5-10 off.


So say a 3D roll yields 11 and 1D yields 3- that would be 11-7=4 points of damage.

Probably a bit much, I did just throw this system out and never have used anything like it. Kind of a freaky saving throw against damage.

Maybe -1D-2, for a 3-8 point reduction range, or 3D becomes 2D-2.